Laura R. Merrill photograph collection, 1900-1994

Laura Merrill was born in Brigham City on 6 February 1876 to David Morgan Reese and Laura Burbank. After having only formal education to the eighth grade available to her, she studied and passed the teacher's exam and taught primary school. When requirements were raised, she attended Utah State Agricultural College in Logan, Utah, becoming one of the first women to attend. She then taught in Portage and Brigham City, Utah. Married to Lorin Asa Merrill on 13 June 1900, she bore eight children before her husband's death in 1919. Merrill then served six years as Cache County Recorder (1920-1926). In 1927 she studied Library Science at the University of Washington in Seattle and then returned to become the librarian at Logan High School, where she worked intermittently from 1922 through 1961. Merrill served two missions: Canada (1946-1948) and the Eastern States (1941-1943). She also worked at the Topaz Japanese internment camp in 1944. In the 1950s Utah State University named the Merrill Hall dormitories in honor of Laura.

Lorin Asa Merrill was born in 1876 to Marriner Wood Merrill, (the first temple president for the Logan LDS temple and later an apostle in the LDS church), and his plural wife Almira Jane Bainbridge. Lorin grew up in Richfield, Utah and attended Utah State Agricultural College. He served a mission for the LDS Church in 1897 to California. He worked as a county agent then as an assistant demonstration leader in Cache valley. Lorin died in 1919 at the age of 40.